Our Approach
Commonbond is a creative studio working across the UK from offices in Sheffield & London. Established in 2021 by Kate Nicklin, Ben Harris-Hutton and Graham Mateer.We are committed to crafting beautiful and sustainable buildings, connected to landscape and context. We believe good architecture is produced by working openly and collaboratively, involving our clients throughout the process. We offer a full service tailored to your exact needs, being highly skilled at working with listed buildings, conservation areas, and unlocking difficult sites.
Our directors share a deep interest in the use of natural materials and low-carbon architecture. Our proposals are idiosyncratic and respond to the character and history of the places in which we work. We are currently developing a wide range of projects, both retrofit and new-build, ranging from artists’ studios to small residential developments and private homes.
In each project, our aim is to create buildings that people love, and buildings that are truly sustainable.
How We Work
We enjoy the craft of analogue methods of production. Hand sketching, physical model making, and material prototyping are all integral to what we bring to a project.We start with research; reading; learning the history of a place. A first conversation begins the process of defining a brief, which will be tested, visualised, and questioned throughout the design process. We are propositional, casting a wide net before settling on an agreed approach.
Above all, we collaborate. Projects are as much yours as ours, and each bears the individual hallmarks of those that commissioned it. We are precise, but with an appreciation for both the tolerance of building and the marks left by those that make them.
Sustainability is important. We will advocate for a low-carbon approach; to touch the ground lightly; to use material efficiently. Light and air must be enjoyed. Views framed. Spaces made to work hard, but always becoming delightful places to be.
Our Experience
Between us we have spent over thirty years in practice, most recently working as associates at three of the profession’s most highly regarded offices. We have been responsible for many award-winning projects, including three House of the Year shortlists, the winner of the 2018 Manser Medal and 2019 Stirling Prize People’s Vote.We founded Commonbond to bring our experience of building to a wide range of new clients. Our backgrounds are diverse, ranging from housing and community engagement, hotels and one-off houses, to civic buildings and sensitive heritage. Kate and Graham self-built our Garden Hide project, a hempcrete studio that houses the southern Commonbond office.
This experience of designing through making, and building with our own hands, informs all of the work of the studio. Our projects are carefully detailed and we enjoy the process of refining them with the craftsmen that build them, to deliver architecture that is characterful yet cost effective, robust and fit for purpose.